They couldn't they couldn't they couldn't. And now I can't. I'm 30 years old and technically in menopause; these birth control pills I'm on now, the same ones I took before, I take because I no longer have any ovaries. Without ovaries, you get no estrogen, and without estrogen I face such fun possibilities as osteoporosis by the age of 40, vile mood swings and hot flashes now. What I don't take these birth control pills for is, ironically enough, birth control. Because without ovaries, of course, I have no eggs to meet any eager little sperm that might venture 'round those parts. An oops pregnancy, that thing I so often used to worry about, is no longer even a possibility.

I never loved other people's children. My college roommate went through a phase senior year where she couldn't look at a picture of a pudgy baby face without sighing a heartfelt I-want-one! But I've never been one of those women: children are small, and sometimes cute, and often interesting, but I don't walk by these strange little beings on the street and feel any particular tugging at the ol' heart.

What makes my small heart feel big as the universe is the idea of family. And while I spent most of my twenties stumbling along with no clear career goal in mind, I knew I wanted the boy to be there in my future, and for us to someday have kids. I am a good wife and the boy is a great husband and expanding our happy little family of two to three, then four, and maybe five, was never a question of if, but when, with the answer pushing ever later into the future as time as I got closer and closer to thirty, and thirty felt younger and younger.

It's funny how as soon as you discover that you can't have something, you suddenly find there's nothing in the world you want more.